Open Wide a Wilderness
Canadian Nature Poems
(Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2009)
ART 108
The first anthology to focus on the rich tradition of Canadian nature poetry in English, Open Wide a Wilderness is a survey of Canada’s regions, poetries, histories, and peoples as these relate to the natural world. The poetic responses included here range from the heights of the sublime to detailed naturalist observation, from the perspectives of pioneers and those who work in the woods and on the sea to the dismayed witnesses of ecological destruction, from a sense of terror in confrontation with the natural world to expressions of amazement and delight at the beauty and strangeness of nature, our home. Arranged chronologically, the poems include excerpts from late-eighteenth-century colonial pioneer epics and selections from both well-known and more obscure nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. A substantial section is devoted to contemporary writers who are working within and creating a new ecopoetic aesthetic in the early twenty-first century.
Don McKay’s introductory essay, “Great Flint Singing,” explores in McKay’s inimitable way the thorny issues of Canadian poets’ representations of nature over the past 150 years. Focusing on key texts by Duncan Campbell Scott, Charles G. D. Roberts, Earle Birney, Dennis Lee, and others, the essay traces Wordsworthian influences in a New World context, celebrates Canadian poets’ love of natural history observation, and finds a way through a rich and contradictory tradition to current trends in ecopoetics.
(Description Source: Wilfred Laurier University Press)
Author
Nancy Holmes is an associate professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) at UBC Okanagan. She has published six collections of poetry, most recently Arborophobia (University of Alberta Press, 2022) and The Flicker Tree: Okanagan Poems (Ronsdale Press, 2012), a collection of poems about the place, people, plants, and animals of the Okanagan Valley in the southern interior of British Columbia. Nancy won the 2017 Malahat Review’s Creative Non-Fiction award.
Nancy’s poems, essays and short stories have been published in Canada, the UK, and Ireland. She is the editor of Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009). She teaches Creative Writing and has been both Head of the Department of Creative Studies and the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in FCCS. She also collaborates with communities and other artists on eco art projects both locally and internationally, including the award-winning Border Free Bees project https://borderfreebees.com/.
UBC Library Holdings
How to Purchase this Book
From the Publisher – Wilfred Laurier University Press
From Used-book Sellers – ABE, Amazon, Antiqbook, Biblio, Vialibri
Paper ISBN: 9781554580330
UBC Okanagan Classroom Artwork Project
The University of British Columbia Okanagan Classroom Artwork Project aims to display academically inspiring artwork in classrooms and other teaching areas of the university.
Artwork displayed as part of this project – including the covers of books and journals containing work written or edited by UBCO scholars and researchers – is intended to help enliven university teaching spaces, educate classroom users about the connections between research and teaching, and introduce members of the broader public to some of the research and scholarship carried out at UBCO.
How to Submit Artwork
If you know of other book or journal covers, or other academically inspiring artwork that is connected to work carried out by UBCO artists, scholars or researchers and that is consistent with UBCO’s educational mission, please email your suggestions to classroom.artwork@ubc.ca.
The UBC Okanagan Classroom Artwork Project began in 2019 with support from the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences. It is now a joint project of UBCO’s Faculties and the Office of the Provost.
Artwork and other images that are a part of this project are displayed solely for educational purposes.